Almost fifty years after Dr Chris Barnard performed the first human heart transplant, the journalist Ray Hartle received a donor heart in the Cape Town hospital named after the pioneering surgeon. Arriving just in time for World Heart Day and the 10th anniversary of his heart transplant, Memoir of a Fractured Heart is Hartle’s account of the life experiences which made his heart pound and those that eased its rhythm. It explores the interplay, familiar to anyone with a chronic illness, between the physical challenges of being unwell and the emotional upheaval those challenges cause. The book sheds light on heart transplantation treatment for the lay person. Hartle acknowledges the medical significance – for the world, for South Africa and for himself – of Barnard’s trailblazing surgery in 1967. His gratitude for his life-extending transplant is coupled with a necessary critique of the ethics and protocols involved and the failure of the South African government to build on Barnard’s legacy.